Eighty years ago at the LSE, Friedrich Hayek launched an assault upon the new economic thinking of John Maynard Keynes. The clash was so bitter and vituperative that it scandalized the cloistered world of academia. Eighty years on, the differences between the two men have still not been finally resolved and their conflicting approaches to the economy continue to define the profound chasm between politicians of left and right.

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LSE students and staff are able to collect one ticket from the New Academic Building SU shop, located on the Kingsway side of the building from 10.00am on Tuesday 7 February.

Members of the public, LSE staff, students and alumni can request one ticket via the online ticket request form which will be live on this listing from shortly after midnight on Tuesday 7 February till at least 12noon on the same day. If at 12noon we have received more requests than there are tickets available, the line will be closed, and tickets will be allocated on a random basis to those requests received. If we have received fewer requests than tickets available, the ticket line will stay open until all tickets have been allocated.

I am not sure I would promote an event featuring Wapshott. Greg Ransom at Taking Hayek Seriously has posted an “I do not recommend” post on Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics.
“The first thing to say about this book is that much the most of it is a fantasy.
But there are bigger problems with the book.
Nicholas Wapshott grew up as a British journalist and his approach to truth and objectivity and getting the story right unfortunately reflects that worst of that dubious background. The ethic Wapshott brings to material is the ethic Mark Twain brought to the Western story — reality never gets in the way of the demands of the tale he is determined to tell.
But it’s even worse than that.”
My own conclusion in a review upcoming in the Quarterly Review of Austrian Economics:
“Wapshott has clearly read and can quote Hayek’s technical work, usually out of context. But he has apparently benefited little for this reading. He remains totally committed to a macro as opposed to micro understanding of how an economy works. Wapshott’s assessment of the relative merits of Hayek and Keynes will appeal to and be quoted by the many planners of all parties firmly committed to the ideology that a modern economy truly needs somebody in charge.
However, Wapshott’s drama is not just a melodrama, but a fairytale. Readers truly looking for a better understanding of the crisis must look elsewhere. If one wants a better picture of how the world got into this mess and how applying the ideas of Keynes actually played out in the real world, Lemieux (2011) would be a good starting point.”
Ransom has said I was way to kind to Wapshott. I agree.